Saturday, December 9, 2017

This Jain manuscript was commissioned in the 1400's at Mandu in Madhya Pradesh, under the reign of Sultan Mahmud. This folio is from the collection at the National Museum. It shows a Tirthankara figure turning beads in meditation. Devotees flank the main figure.

It is an illustration from the Kalpa Sūtra, a Jain text containing the biographies of the Jain Tirthankaras, notably Parshvanatha and Mahavira, including the latter's Nirvāna (liberation from cycle of rebirth). Bhadrabahu, a Jain Acharya (guru), is considered the author of the Kalpa Sutra. It is traditionally said to have been composed somewhere in the 3rd century BCE.

Jaina manuscript painting is likely a very old tradition, but currently there is physical surviving evidence only from the 1100's onwards. Originally it was done on palm-leaf, because paper had not yet arrived in India. After the arrival of paper somewhere in the 12th century (paper came to India from Iran), the Jain monks starting using it.

By the end of the 1300's, deluxe manuscripts were produced on paper, brilliantly adorned with gold, silver, crimson and a rich ultramarine derived from imported lapis lazuli. The photo I posted above is one of those.

The Jains are even today, a book-loving community, placing emphasis on documentation in their bhandars (monastery libraries). We have to thank the Jain Chalukya kings who ruled Gujarat, Rajasthan and Malwa for their patronage of Jain libraries. One of them, Kumarapala, who ruled in the 1300's from his capital city Patan in Gujarat, commissioned and distributed hundreds of copies of the Kalpa Sutra. Can you imagine hundreds of such handmade painted books? What a sight it must be! Kumarapala founded 21 bhandars in Patan.

The major centres of Jain manuscript production were Ahmedabad and Patan in Gujarat. Other centres included Jaisalmer, Gwalior and Delhi. There were also manuscripts written in Kanarese and Tamil in south India. Illustrations were traditionally painted both on the wooden cover (patli) and on the folios. The patrons were Jain merchant communities, who considered the commissioning of illustrated books and their donation to libraries to be an important merit-making activity.

Tuesday, September 12, 2017

We are on the old Delhi Agra highway. Here's the Kos Minar we photographed.

These were originally laid in the mid-1500's by the Pashtun ruler Sher Shah Suri along the Grand Trunk Road. Subsequently the Mughals also made a practice of erecting them.

Kos Minars served as important milestones to help measure distances in the Empire. Agra was the Mughal capital, and from there the Kos Minars radiated outward, towards Ajmer, Lahore and Mandu (Madhya Pradesh).

All along these highways, there were forts (qilas), fortified towns (shehrs), resting places for travellers (caravanserais), stepwells (baolis), postal system (dak chowkis), and many shady trees.

The word Kos itself is confusing, because there exist in India different measures of what a Kos actually means. Kos comes from the Sanskrit krosha, and has many references in traditional Sanskrit texts. Alexander Cunningham, a British engineer, who went on to found the Archaeological Survey of India in the mid-1800s wrote about the kos measurement system in his book The Ancient Geography of India. He says that in North India, there were three widely accepted types of kos:
- the short kos, or the Padshahi kos, about 1.25 miles, used in north-west frontier and Punjab
- the kos of the Gangetic provinces, which is about 2.25 miles
- the long kos, which is used south of the Yamuna, in the Bundelkhand region, which is about 4 miles (and also used in Mysore)

Cunningham says the first two are actually part of the same system, that the Gangetic kos is just twice that of the Padshahi. Jahangir built his sarais (inns) every 8 kos, that is about 10 miles. The British, who also understood the importance of the Grand Trunk Road, chose to maintain it just like the empires before them. They built dak-bungalows, resting houses used by officers and for postal communication, every 10 miles.

Sunday, July 16, 2017

If you are a foreigner coming to Delhi, or a local with overseas visitors coming to Delhi, we would like your help.

We have a new batch of guides being trained for our offbeat and fun Delhi by Metro tour. This is a tour we are doing in partnership with the non-profit Manzil. The guides are from low-income families and this is an upskilling program for them to earn money while they are in college.

They are currently being formally trained to do the tour, and we want to give them some trial tours for practice. Our guides need to practice understanding foreign accents and helping foreigners getting comfortable with Delhi. They need to practice how to explain apparently simple and obvious things about our culture to a foreigner. They can only do this by actually taking foreign tourists on the tour.

If you have overseas visitors coming to Delhi in the next few months (Jul-Aug-Sep) we would love to offer them a free tour. There will be one or two trainee guides doing the tour. If you have a large group, we will also assign a fully trained guide.

As I said, there is no charge for the tour. We just want our kids to have some practice.

We will pay for the local travel expenses on the tour (Metro, autorickshaw, cyclerickshaw). The only thing guests need to pay for is their own meal (we will stop at a restaurant for snacks).

Wednesday, June 7, 2017

Yesterday, we went to visit the non-profit Manzil in Delhi. We were trying to recruit the next batch of students. We want some students to join our office operations team, and some to be trained as guides for our Delhi by Metro tour.

Four girls came for the meeting, each with their own constraints and dreams. One of them got married early, and has a baby; she has returned to studies and is now in Std 11. One wants to become a teacher. Another wants to grow her craft business. Yet another is graduating and wants a chance for a better life. They all have one thing in common: they need some form of income right now.

We explained how our flexi-time and flexi-location work model can help them earn and finance their dreams. We hope this model will give them the ability to get started on a career even if they have constraints and challenges.

We also explained that we don't want to keep them with us forever; what we want is to give them that initial break, that initial income cushion for 3 or 4 years, which the poor find difficult to get. Then they can fly high, charting their own path.

I have learnt that if you truly want to build a successful social enterprise, it has to start from what the other person needs. We cannot go into these types of meetings saying, oh, here's what we want, and now you girls must adjust your timings and personal commitments to suit us. The insensitive and difficult nature of the 9-to-5 environment, combined with commuting time, makes it impossible for women from disadvantaged backgrounds to find a way to become economically independent. Some sort of middle path has to be created.

Sunday, February 12, 2017

Ever since Bikaner House got a makeover last year, it has become an exciting venue for exhibitions and events.

source: https://www.facebook.com/BikanerHouse16/

My friend Sumedha launched her book Mewar Ramayana there. The book is beautifully illustrated with paintings commissioned by Jagat Singh, the Maharana of the Mewar kingdom.

https://www.facebook.com/BikanerHouse16/

In the 17th century, Jagat Singh commissioned a manuscript retelling the Ramayana. The text is in Sanskrit and the illustrations are in three different styles of Mewar painting.

This is believed to be the most well preserved manuscript form of the Ramayana. The rulers of Mewar trace their ancestry to Lord Rama, and it is but natural that in Jagat Singh's long and prosperous reign of 24 years, a book like this was commissioned.

There have been lots of other launches here as well. A photo-exhibition by Jawai, several designer names, art shows, and so on. It's really shaping up well as an alternative to the more well-established India Habitat Center.

https://www.facebook.com/BikanerHouse16/

Adding significantly to the charm of Bikaner House is Vayu, a design store that offers handcrafted artifacts for the home. They also have lots of lovely curios, jewellery and designer apparel. You need somewhat deep pockets, but it's really lovely and I particularly like their vintage silver jewellery. Last year they had a fabulous pop-up of Bungalow Eight from Mumbai; and lots of other things as well. They're open all days of the week, between 11 am and 7 pm.

If you're heading to Vayu, you can round off the shopping with lunch at the popular Chor Bizarre, which has now opened an outlet in Bikaner House.

I'm really glad to see an old heritage building being re-purposed and brought to life. Bikaner House - along with other royal houses - came up in the 1920s, when the British were building a new capital for the Empire. A portion of this grand new capital was set aside for the princely states of India, that were not officially under the Empire, but operated as independent kingdoms acknowledging British power. A large chunk of India was under these princely states (see all the yellow bits in this map below).

To manage the relationship with the princely states, the British came up with the idea of a Chamber of Princes. The Indian name for this chamber was Narendra Mandal; and it provided a forum in which the rulers of the princely states of India could voice their needs to the colonial government of British India. Once a year, the princely rulers descended upon Delhi for a meeting of the Chamber of Princes. So it made sense to build palaces for them.

source: Getty Images https://goo.gl/XlQIBO

Some of the buildings were very grand indeed. The most impressive was Hyderabad House, reflecting the incredible wealth of the Nizam of Hyderabad. Indeed, the Nizam wanted to build something that would rival the Viceroy's building (now Rashtrapati Bhavan), but of course he was not allowed to do so!

The smallest and coziest of the palaces was Bikaner House, because it was more like a bungalow than a palace. The small size now makes it a perfect venue for events.

Saturday, January 21, 2017

We all know that Hindu society is patriarchal for the most part. Is gender inequality among Hindus only a cultural/social phenomenon? Or does it have a legal basis? What legal rights do Hindu women have? Are they considered equal to men in the eyes of the law? What are the roots of the women's rights movement in India?

As a Hindu woman, I thought I should try and figure out who my friends and foes are. Who or what has helped the cause of Hindu women, and who has hindered it?

First, let us look at religion. If we examine Hindu scriptural law, there is no single uniform code. Influenced by many shastras and commentaries, the law has traditionally been applied by village councils as per local customs. Thus, there is significant variation in women's rights across the country, based on specifics of caste and class. Most of the time, these customs are not pro-women, although they often offer quick justice and practical solutions based on easily understood cultural norms. When women operate within these norms, but face injustice or denial of rights, the village council or panchayat offers a quick and very useful method of redressal. But the norms themselves are quite misogynistic.

William Bentinck, who abolished sati

It was the British who began the process of codification of Hindu law in the 19th century, starting with Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. As part of this process, some local customs, which the British found reprehensible, were declared illegal. For example, sati was banned, and widow remarriage was allowed. This was the first step in giving all Hindu women, irrespective of caste or class, some rights under British law.

The late 19th century saw the beginnings of the Hindu women's rights movement in India. The early campaigners were men, armed with English education, who fought orthodox Hindu society to obtain more rights for women. They were eventually joined by some trail blazing women, who heralded a brave departure from social norms. Women's rights organisations began asking for a comprehensive code of Hindu laws rather than piecemeal legislation. They had mixed results; because the British were slow to make major changes after the Mutiny of 1857.

The independence movement in the late 1800's and early 1900's slowed down the progress of women's rights. The freedom fighters resisted any British interventions to 'modernize' the Indian family. In 1891, when the British introduced an act to increase the age of consent for marriage, there were big protests.

Sarojini Naidu, leading Salt Satyagraha, 1930, after the arrest of Gandhi.
First woman president of the Congress

Things changed under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi, who believed in greater rights for Indian women. Although he propounded a rather idealized view of Hindu women, glorifying self-sacrifice, it propelled many Hindu women to come out of their homes and join the Indian freedom struggle in the first half of the 1900's.

The British, meanwhile, continued the process of legal reform. In 1937, the Hindu Women's Rights to Property Act was passed, giving widows rights of inheritance in a joint family. A Hindu Law committee was appointed in 1941, to look further into the rights of daughters. The committee, led by the constitutional scholar B. N. Rau, toured a number of cities throughout India in 1945, and interviewed many people and caste associations. In 1947, India got independence from the British. Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated in January 1948. With support from Nehru and Ambedkar, a Hindu Code Bill was introduced to the new Constituent Assembly on April 9, 1948.

Strong protests erupted from many quarters. Religious organisations such as the Hindu Mahasabha said it was 'suicidal folly' (because the new code bill banned polygamy). They believed that the whole race of Hindus would be destroyed, since there were no equivalent restrictions on polygamous Muslims. The pontiffs of leading religious sects said that giving rights to women would break the effective functioning of the Hindu joint-family, and was against the principles of Hindu dharma.

Here are some photos of protests which took place in Delhi in 1949. The protestors were against giving Hindu women inheritance rights, rights to divorce, etc. Since those were simpler days, without huge security issues; here we can see how the public have easy access to the Parliament House! People can be seen climbing the walls, or just hanging around. No doubt, some brought their own packed meals and made a picnic out of it.

After these major protests, the Bill lapsed and went into hibernation. In 1952, the Congress party swept the polls with a huge majority. This gave Jawaharlal Nehru the political strength to implement his vision. As a result of the untiring efforts of Nehru and Ambedkar, four separate acts came into being:

Hindu Marriage Act of 1955 - this allowed inter-caste marriages, introduced monogamy and created provisions for the dissolution of marriage

Hindu Succession Act of 1956 - this act gave women absolute ownership of inherited property (previously they could only enjoy the property without ownership during their lifetime).

Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act of 1956 - gave the mother guardianship rights if the father neglected the child; and also allowed mothers the rights to be guardians of illegitimate chilren

Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance act of 1956 - allowed women to claim one-third of the joint income of her husband and herself in case of divorce

Despite many limitations, these Acts together were a great victory for gender rights of Hindu women.

The Constitution of India, which came into effect in 1950, guarantees to all Indian women the following:
- equality (Article 14)
- no discrimination by the State (Article 15(1)
- equality of opportunity (Article 16)
- equal pay for equal work (Article 39(d)

In addition, via Article 15 (3), the Constitution allows special provisions to be made by the State in favour of women and children. It renounces practices derogatory to the dignity of women via Article 51(A) (e), and also allows for provisions to be made by the State for securing just and humane conditions of work and for maternity relief. (Article 42).

Since 1956, several landmark judgments have been passed by the Congress government, each one bringing a little more improvement in the legal rights of Hindu women. Several laws have come into effect:

National Commission for Women Act 1990 - a body to review the constitutional and legal safeguards for women, recommend remedial legislative measures, facilitate redressal of grievances and advise the Government on all policy matters affecting women.

Sexual Harassment of Women at Work Place (Prevention, Prohibition & Redressal) Act 2013 - defines sexual harassment at the work place and creates a mechanism for redressal of complaint

Compared to just a few decades ago, there is huge progress. But there's is still a long way to go in this journey. The current government has been talking about implementing a uniform civil code. This is more an attempt to bring Muslims under the ambit of a civil code, rather than any attempt to further strengthen the rights of Hindu women. The attitudes of right-wing Hindu organisations (which form the major support base for the current government) continue to be parochial and misogynistic.Black and White Photographs taken during the anti-Hindu Code Bill demonstrations outside the Council House, New Delhi on Dec. 12, 1949. Source: http://photodivision.gov.in/IntroPhotodetails.asp?thisPage=1392